The Secret to Sucess is FailureThe lives of Tom Edison
and some
other categories of
famous people
(writers, for example) cause me to suspect that,
ironic as it may seem,
sometimes the best place to look for personal
success is under a
pile of failures.
--
LL
This is about you. Stick with me through the
necessary history,
and you will receive an injection of personal
potential. You will
see no graphics below. No entertaining videos or
photos.
This
is a tiny instruction manual. All you will find is words
that might
just change your life for the better. Okay, here
we go ...

Bailouts. Flushing millions of dollars into a
floundering General
Motors so that the jobs and benefits of union members
are secure, and
remain lavish. Dumping billions on Wall Street and
quasi-government agencies like Fanny May and Freddie
Mac, so the bad
mortgages they have purchased from banks and savings and
loan-like
institutions across America can be supported.

It's called "state capitalism" these days. It's
just another word
for communism, some say. I say it's just
another word for
fascism, since it perfectly describes what Adolf Hitler
did to bring
Germany out of its horrible post-WWI economic disaster.

What's bad about "state capitalism?" It requires
slaves to make
it work.

America Happened

China, these days, is profitable (for the government),
but not
dynamic. This makes it part of the past.
Dynamism is not a
typical quality in human national affairs from an
historical
standpoint. Egypt, Greece, Rome, Imperial China --
name your
exciting ancient civilization and, it's all the
same. There are
no remains of four-bedroom Egyptian suburban commuter
communities for
Indiana Jones to dig up.

Why is that important to you, personally? Because
it means that
when the king owns everything, the most that will
trickle down to the
citizenry is crumbs. Pure monarchy, socialist
"democracy" or a
fascist/communist state, it's all the same. All
the money stays
at the top and the poverty stretches all the way to the
bottom.

State Capitalism was the order of the day in those
ancient
cultures. The "capitalist," as in China, today,
was the
government. There were merchant and artist classes
which served
the state and were a little better off, but their
"workers," often as
not, were slaves.

You can create wealth without full-throated dynamism,
and when you do,
end up with hovels looking out on gigantic structures
like the pyramids
and the Coliseum, but that's where it stops. It's
like having
great powerful arms and wimpy legs. Only part of
the body is
dynamic. This limits the potential for victory.

Then, the United States of America happened. The
State didn't own
everything, anymore. The full force of dynamism
was unleashed in
a nation for the first time in history.

It's about human
energy

Let us say that you were an employee in a pyramid
building company in
ancient Egypt. What was your future
potential? Zero.
Unless you were related to Cleopatra or one of her
princes, there was
no ladder you could climb. That's how it is in
some places,
today. Let's say you are an employee in a
present-day Chinese
factory. What is your future potential? I
say almost zero,
for one simple reason. Companies owned by the
government are run
by bureaucrats. You are welcome to send us
examples of
inventions, improvements, innovations and incandescant
revolutionary
production breakthroughs by bureaucracies in any place,
at any time in
history.

Bureaucracies are about the continuity of
bureaucracies. A job
that lasts forever, no matter what the bureaucracy
does. A
frozen employment tableau, offering frozen job positions
and
government-guaranteed benefits. You may, if you
wish, describe
the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles as
dynamic. Nobody in my
lifetime has ever used that word to describe the DMV.

If it's owned by the state, dynamic is the last thing
you should call
it. And "market responsive?" A
government-run,
government-owned operation? Shirley, you jest.

Okay, I'm happy, now. I have just accomplished a
goal. Many
of you out there, for the first time in your life, have
just learned
the difference between a bureaucracy and a private
company. You
now know that there is no motivation to improve a
bureaucracy because
there is almost no chance it will "fail."

Only private businesses can fail. Unless Democrats
get poliltical
donations from them, of course. Then, the
government will use
taxpayer dollars to make sure they don't fail.
General Moters in
2010, for example. But, you saw the video of the
GM workers
getting drunk and serviced by prostitutes during their
lunch hour,
earlier this year. Did you ask why it was
happening? Well,
here's the answer. When you can't lose your job,
it doesn't
matter if you work, let alone how good you are at
it. Who gives a
crap about the customer, then?

The world abounds with irony. Take Darwin, for an
example.
He is the God of the secular evolutionist. The
fact that he
studied to be a minister should be deleted from history
texts.
Anyway, Darwin described all existence as being a battle
for
survival. Living things which through occasional
DNA changes
happen to have a trait which provides an advantage
within their sphere
of existence, live to reproduce in greater
numbers. That is the
entire story.

Life is competitive. The entire story of Darwin
has to do with
ways to better deal with problems. If government
jobs depended on
providing an ever improving service or product, one day
you actually
could refer to the DMV as a dynamic operation.

So why, anybody with a working brain will ask, when
liberals create
governments, do they create ones which, according to
them, solve
everybody's problems? And why, whether or not the
solution works, or
even if the people who are forced to accept the solution
genuinely hate
the idea, don't they fix what is obviously wrong with
the
operation?

Why, in God's Name (irony intended), are Darwinists all
anti-Darwinists? Where does it say in Darwin's
Theory that
dynamic evolution is a sin?

Because what you hear from them isn't what you get when
they're in
power. Taken to its natural extreme, in a
socialist state, if
you suggest a better way to do something in a
bureaucracy, it will go
into the get-to-it basket and lay there until the paper
turns
brown. In the worst of those kinds of
states, you are
instantly off to work in an agricultural commune.

And, though, you don't know it, you just read the key to
improving
anything. In the common American parlance, it's
called "freedom."

Here we go.

My Life as a Job
Gypsy

The United States of America. The right to pursue
happiness. What happened here, back then?
Well, freedom
happened. After the Revolutionary War, the
government blue bloods
of England weren't there to tell you what they needed
you to do, any
longer. If a guy thought he was a better
blacksmith than his
plantation boss's brother, the third Earl of Devonshire
and the fifth
cousin, once removed, of King George, he could walk off
the farm,
borrow some money and open up his own blacksmith shop in
a nearby
village.

Before the U.S.A., if he had done that, he would have
been whipped or
jailed, possibly both. Now, he could give it a
try, and nobody
could stop him. The problem, of course, was that a
private
business isn't like a bureaucracy. It involves
risk.

On the other hand, if he made it, besides being able to
do things the
way he wanted, instead of doing everything the way the
Earl wanted,
there was the matter of wages. If he was really
good at
blacksmithing, he could make some real money.

You're beginning to get it, aren't you? This means
you are a real
American. You can smell freedom and a few extra
bucks to buy a
motorcycle you've always wanted, from two counties away,
God Almighty
bless you for that.

Now to the story about how part of my life is living
proof of the
point, here.

Larry
Leonard
Leaves
School
Without Any Idea What He Should Do
(by Larry Leonard, of course, and that's ironic,
as you will
soon see.)

The year was 1959. High school in Hillsboro,
Oregon, was
finished. I was on my own, without a lick of
support from
relatives, most of whom were either dead or not in the
least interested
in what happened to me. Oh, you should have lived
in those
times. A tiny government compared to now.
Hardly any
bureaucrats to tell you that you can't do this and
shouldn't say
that. Your taxes were paid by February.
There were almost
no government "programs."

If you wanted something, you had to make the money to
buy it, and it
was yours. If you lost a job, your unemployment
checks lasted for
months instead of years. If you wanted some
property, you
established your credit by proving you were stable, and
after saving up
enough for the down payment bought it.

A glorious time. We need it back.

Anyway, I went out and got a job at a department
store. I was
lousy at it, and was fired. Then, I got a job
changing tires in a
tire store. I was lousy at it, and was
fired. Then I got a
job shoveling squash in a cannery. Guess what
happened?
Then I got a job roofing houses. Yup, same
thing. About
twenty times.

Then, my new wife said she wanted to go back to Coos
Bay, her
home. So, off to the gloriously soggy Oregon South
Coast we
went. There, I got a job in a plywood mill.
Yup. Same
thing.

Then, something magical happened.

I went to the local newspaper, bought one from the
street box near the
front door, and looked in the classified ads for the
next job I would
fail at. While staring at the possibilities, what
is called an
"epiphany" happened. It's pronounced E-piff-eh-nee
and means "a
sudden twinge of mental inspiration or invention
slightly outside of
the box."

I thought, "I have been getting jobs out
of newspapers ever since I left high school. Why
not try getting
a job in a
newspaper, this
time?"

So, I studied that newspaper from a totally different
perspective. Not making classified ads,
certainly. You'd
have to know Czechoslovakian for that. "GrnLine
pllr for chain"
and like that. Well, what about news? I had
no experience
or training in the field. I'd never even
considered writing for a
living, and barely got passing grades in English.
But those big
ads. They all said the same thing.
"Sale." "Big
Sale" "Discount Sale" That didn't look all
that
difficult. So, I walked into the newspaper office
and asked who
did those.

"That's the display advertising department," replied the
receptionist. "Would you like to talk to Mr.
Jones, the man in
charge of that?"

Well, I walked into Mr. Jones' office and told him that
I was an
unhappy young man. I had failed at dozens of
occupations because
I couldn't shake my dream -- which was working in the
Display
Advertising Department of a daily newspaper. I had
dreamt about
doing that as long as I could remember, and it just
wouldn't let go of
me. Even though I had never studied journalism in
high school,
and had no college, at all, I had driven people
crazy at the
Hillsboro Argus (a weekly paper) just hanging around and
bothering them
with question after question. And, I even made
sample Display Ads
as a hobby.

"Could I see those ads?" asked Mr. Jones.

"Certainly, sir," I said, "They're at the
apartment. I'll
go get them and be right back."

Statistics are
far from
the only damned lies

You've already got it, don't you? Everything I
told that nice man
was a damned lie. There wasn't a lick of truth in
any of
it. Hell, I didn't even have an apartment in Coos
Bay. I
was living with my wife's parents.

But, I left that office and went to the nearest Payless
Drug
Store. There, I bought some notebook paper and
some black and
colored pencils and crayons. Then, on the way back
to the
newspaper, I made up ads for the stores I passed.
Then, I walked
into Mr. Jones' office and gave those "advertisements"
to him.

"Son," he said, "you have talent. How'd you like
to run tear
sheets and other errands for us? I think we could
turn you into a
pretty good ad man."

Thus, it wasn't truth, but lies, which set me free.

(Note:
10/21/11 -- Since
I posted this story, I have been asked why I lied to
the man. The answer is, I don't know.
Perhaps it would be useful for you to know that this
was the one time I did it. Never before and
never after. Just that one time. I write
it off to love at first sight. Tell the girl
anything, just to get her to talk to you. Certainly it
was a lie that paid off for that man. I
accomplished the impossible while working in that
newspaper. He and his boss, the publisher were
well-rewarded for hiring me. Perhaps one day, you'll
find an asterisk here, which will take you to that
amazing story. LL)

I loved the business, and all the disciplines around
it.
Advertising, journalism, the whole thing. From
there, I went on
to other newspapers, then to small ad agencies, then to
big advertising
agencies, ending up as Pacific NW Creative Director for
the largest
independant (Non-New York City connected) ad agency
chain on the West
Coast of the United States of America.

Here, read this when you get a chance. The
Alaska Airlines Eskimo
After that I went on to write for all sorts of
newspapers and
magazines, including this one. It has been great
fun for
decades. And, since I am a political conservative,
can you
imagine how many citizens of the People's Socialist
Democratic Republic
of Oregon I have irritated along the way?

Every day has its problems, but being able on a regular
basis to drive
your enemies crazy makes for what Jimmy Stewart would
call "A wonderful
Life."

The Point is ...

For centuries, people have been dying (sometimes
literally) to get to
the United States of America. Why? Because
the country the
Founding Fathers created here offers freedom. Not
guaranteed
success, but rather the opportunity to try what you want
-- or if you
don't even know what you want, the opportunity to keep
casting your fly
until something you just love bites on your hook.

That is the secret to economic dynamism -- having the
largest number of
people who aren't stopped from trying to realize their
dream.

From an economic standpoint, economic freedom,
capitalism, allows the
cream to rise. Unlike a bureaucracy, capitalism
favors those who
can do the job best. Yes there are blue blood
companies where
relatives, or at least people who graduated from the
right colleges,
get the opportunities. But, in America, in those
days, and to a
lesser degree in these days, if you were good at doing
what those blue
bloods were doing, you could rent a place to do it, and
compete with
them !!!

In a controlled economy, the favored ones do not like
competition.

But, in a capitalist economy, somebody can start out
from scratch and
with damn good luck, damn good judgement and damned hard
work, one day
buy the blue blood store. Their only real risk is
failure, which
is a kind of freedom. Why do I say that? Did
you read the
quote at the top of this essay? In America, it's
amazing how many
multiple failures turn out to be learning experiences
that train a man
how to finally do it correctly.

In America, unless you help the socialists turn it into
a
government-controlled bureaucracy, failure can end up
being nothing
more than a rocky path to a roaring success. And
even if it
doesn't, until it is turned into a socialist state, at
least you can't
be stopped from trying.

That's the secret to national economic dynamism --
letting folks take a
shot at their dreams. And, that's the secret to
your own economic
dynamism, as well. Believe in your future, your
untapped
potential. If you don't know what you want, look
around for it.